On the opening night of “Glow: The Nuclear Show,” tentacles of caution tape stretched out to the parking lot, drawing visitors toward an archway festooned with ribbons, spray-painted butterflies and orange barrier mesh — a portal of sorts into David Zamora Casas' latest vision.

An abbreviated version still stands at a side entrance to the gallery.

“I wanted people to have a mind-set when they walked through the door,” says Casas, curator and lead artist of the exhibit currently at Bihl Haus Arts. “There's so much visual stimulation that I wanted to hit 'em before they walk through the door, because this is serious.”

Organized in response to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster caused by the earthquake and subsequent tsunami in Japan in March 2011, the exhibit features work by more than 30 artists, including Albert Alvarez, Rolando Briseño, Joan Frederick, Jane Madrigal and Franco Mondini-Ruiz. Some of the artists were invited to participate, but most answered a call for work related to the issues surrounding nuclear energy.

If there's any doubt about which way the exhibit leans, the huge anti-nuke banner provided by the Southwest Workers Union that hangs on one wall clears that up right away. But while some of the work in the show is overtly political — for example, Victor Payan's “Remember Los Alamos” digital print — most of the works take a more subtle or indirect approach.

“What ended up happening is that people did do art about nuclear energy, but a lot of people turned it into being about them, about their personal lives, and that's what art is,” says Casas, who put together the show with Debora Kuetzpal Vasquez and Eric Lane. “It's like taking a universal thing and making it your own, and then growing from that.”

Instead of displaying the artwork in typical white-wall gallery fashion, Casas opted to integrate the artwork into a larger installation — a red-tinged baroque confection held together with miles of ribbon, fabric, shiny foil wrap, string lights and barrier tape printed with a warning: “DANGER PELIGRO.”

Those who saw “Ancient Guardians of the Sky” — Casas' previous installation at Bihl Haus Arts — will recognize the artist's transformative, more-is-more style, or what he calls rasquachismo, the make-do aesthetic employed by some Chicano artists.

“I'm sure Kellen could have asked me to just put up a show on the four walls, but I know for a fact that's not why she asked me to do it,” he says, referring to executive director Kellen Kee McIntyre. “She knew I would do something like I did.”

Immediately upon passing through the archway and entering the gallery, visitors are greeted by Casas' “No Nukes,” a mixed-media painting of good-guy Mexican wrestler Blue Demon. His face plate is a collage of documents including a passport application and a voter registration form. An “I Voted” sticker is affixed to his forehead like a third eye. An earlier work by Casas, the painting is a reminder that nukes have long been a subject for the artist, who sometimes performs under the moniker Nuclear Meltdown. He is quick to admit, however, he is not an expert.

“My idea with this art exhibit was to open my own eyes, and educate myself, and then allow other people to share what they know,” he says.

Casas used panels to transform the one-room gallery into a dimly lit maze, with artwork from floor to the 25-foot high ceiling. A mushroom cloud made of red and white tulle hangs from the rafters, a flock of “muertoposas” — winged skeletal fairies, presumably singed by the explosion — hover immediately below.

Kelly Reid Walls's cyanotypes also flutter well above eye level. In two of the photographic prints on cloth, the white figure of a woman appears to float on the blue background, while in “Alice Wonders No More,” the outline of a girl seems frozen in place. The haunting pieces recall shadow images of people created by the atomic bomb explosions in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Nearby, Michelle Love and Daniel Armstrong take on the subject of birth defects and genetic mutation — she in cutout paintings of conjoined children and frogs; he in “Exploding Venus,” a stoneware sculpture of the fertility goddess as a lumpy mass.

There are also smaller installations within the larger one, including Debora Kuetzpal Vasquez's “Nuclear Lotería: Ethnic Cleanse.” The piece is set off by a pair of curtains used as canvas for paintings of a diagram of a reactor and a grinning devil. Inside, tiny fluorescent T-shirts and other clothing items strung on a line over a vintage washing machine sport mutant lotería icons — a two-tailed, three-breasted mermaid; a three-eyed fish; and Atlas burdened by a globe bearing the nuclear symbol.

Sabra Booth's installation-within-an-installation is tucked away in the gallery's bathroom. The artist specifically requested the space for her phosphorescent mushroom cutouts, and Casas was happy to accommodate her.

“Because there was more room for art,” he says. “And I like that idea that there was art everywhere, even in the bathrooms.”

It's a lot to take in. On opening night, one guest wandered through the gallery repeating, “I'm on overload!” Casas says. That is exactly what the artist and curator intended.

“The show was designed to put out as much information out there as possible and (let) the artist(s) take it to where they wanted to take it. And I think they did. They took it to overload.”

“Glow: The Nuclear Show” is currently on view. It will close with a poetry reading and panel discussion 2 to 4 p.m. July 14 at Bihl Haus Art, 2803 Fredericksburg Road, 210-383-9723